


Full Moon Truths

by VillainIHaveDoneThyMother



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: But He Initiates Intimacy, But it's also less than ideal so..., F/M, GMILF Elves, Lujanne is Aaravos's Jailer, Semi-Sexual Intimacy, Touch-Starved, cuddling and verbally attacking each other, just two adults in between life and death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-15 22:20:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18678475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VillainIHaveDoneThyMother/pseuds/VillainIHaveDoneThyMother
Summary: Lujanne fulfills the duties of the guardian of the Moon Nexus, one of which involves checking in on a rather special guest trapped in a place both far away and very near.She was never explicitly told not to get naked with Archmage Aaravos, the horror that all Xadians whisper about. And solitude makes for such strange bedfellows.





	Full Moon Truths

The full moon after the children left and took the dragon prince with them, Lujanne performed the rites and rituals of protection as if everything were normal.

First she meditated all day on the nature of illusion. She ate her worms lightly roasted with sea salt. When night fell she danced among the ruins as the ancients had before her. She sanctified the ground, then double sanctified it because humans had been there. Phoe-Phoe helped her strengthen every one of her monsters, so that any human who dared try to summit the caldera would find themselves in a cauldron of horrors.

Then, once all those tasks were done, the seals were written out, the spells from the tablet sung, she climbed to face the Nexus.

She’d timed it just right. The moon was high and round in sky, as blue as a dragon’s eye, as her mother had always said. It filled the entire lake to the brim with light until it became a reflection of a reflection- for the moon had no light of its own.

Lujanne could see nothing but pale luminescence as she leaned over the edge of the viewing platform. Her own image didn’t even register, not compared to the thrumming brilliance that was the moon’s unveiled face (though not its full face- for it never showed all of itself and there was a piece that no mortal could ever view). The connection wouldn’t get any stronger.

So she clambered onto the railing and threw herself in.

Perhaps it would have been more prudent to clamber down to the slope to the shore and wade in, but she’d never been one for half measures or second guessing herself. Besides, it wasn’t like she would hit the bottom. There was no rocky basin to dash her body against anymore; now that the moon stood in its full glory the path between the worlds was open and all that lay below the surface of the water was emptiness. Lujanne wasn’t sure what firmament that space-without-spaces was made of, perhaps even the ancient scholars hadn’t been sure. But it was as silvery bright as moonlight and as dark as midnight, it cradled without substance, it took matter and made it into thought.

All the world was a shared hallucination- this Lujanne knew in her arcanum. “Reality” was not what you saw but what you perceived. Light bounced off objects just as sunlight bounced off the moon, and made an image that was taken for granted. Sensations created by some far away organ called a brain determined what you felt and did and were. Her body wasn’t her, it was just what she used to get around. She could just as easily be a moth or a tree or a dozen versions of herself- each insubstantial but real because the mind said they were. The truth was a story, always shifting like the moon.

This was why she wasn’t particularly upset by the fact that her body didn’t fully follow her into the place between life and death. She could make a new one so quickly; it was a breeze, really. The physical limitations of being made out of illusions- difficulty lifting heavy weights, some glitches when it came to stairs- didn’t fully apply to where she was going. It wasn’t truly real either.

He was her most sacred trust, her most important duty. When she had been set upon this post, keeping watch over him had been the one thing drilled into her head.

“Armies could assault the Nexus,” her teachers had warned her, “Dark Magic could taint this sacred place. We will survive that, though our hearts will mourn. But if he gets out then it’s over. Are you listening Lujanne? Lujanne!?”

Every month, the Nexus had to be cleansed, the rites read, and the Startouch elf had to be checked on. Just to make sure he wasn’t up to anything. 

Lujanne, who got rather lonely despite the company of herself, herself, herself, and Phoe-Phoe, had come to enjoy the task. For his part he seemed to like their once monthly chats too, for he was even more cut off from the outside world than she was.

It was not a friendship, they were both still aware of who kept the spells binding him in place, but it was an acquaintanceship. They had, over the years, come to an Arrangement.

“Aaravos, where have you gotten to?” Lujanne trilled as she appeared in his prison. He had a well appointed cell- a suite full of light and energy. She suspected he’d made it himself.

He appeared hastily from his study, hood thrown off his head. “Mistress of the Moon Nexus. Is it that time of the month again?” Her blinked at her with steady, yellow and black eyes, the stars up and down his skin glowing from within as he moved. Lujanne had traced those constellations before, and watched as the light pulsated in time with his heart.

“We both know you are not one to miscount the days, Aaravos the star reader, who bound books and made new knowledge.”

“Ah,” he sighed, “Alas, there are no stars here for me to read. Time blends together, you must forgive me if I lose track of some of it.”

He had clocks- water clocks and hourglasses and tiny ticking timepieces with parts she couldn’t understand. But Lujanne, who once went days undressed because she couldn’t be bothered to put on more than a cursory illusion, thought that perhaps she could understand.

Besides, this place was strange. “Time passes differently under our circumstances, doesn’t it?”

A flicker of the eyes. “It does, Moon Guardian.” He looked her in the face as he took her arm and began to lead her back to his study. His hand lingered on hers. “Being of a sympathetic disposition, you will of course release me from this torment.”

“Of course,” Lujanne agreed, for it was the form of the thing. Once they had played with words and fought to undermine one another. Now there was nothing left but a mask of enmity. They acted out the parts of foes set against one another and then they had a cup of tea.

Aaravos liked to pretend he didn’t lie- and to be fair Lujanne had never managed to catch him saying something truly false- but he veiled his face just like any other. The stories said he bore the moon arcanum; even if he didn’t lie he knew how to dissemble.

His library was lovely and light filled as ever, full of books whose beautifully bound pages hid terrible secrets within. She wondered sometimes if they were even real; if this was some place he had lived and worked before his imprisonment, now transported to another plane or if he had summoned every one of the heavy tomes from memory and filled them up with the knowledge he hid within himself.

Here and there were hints of dark magic- a knife on the mantlepiece, neat glass jars of specimens. A shiver of disgust ran down her spine, but she quickly suppressed it. Dark magic was a crime but you committed it against yourself first and foremost. The creature hovering next to her, hand still on her arm, was not in a position to hurt anyone anymore. It was hard to summon up pity but she could tamp down her fear.

Giving his right pectoral muscle a squeeze she detached herself and went to do the necessary work of a jailer. This was the boring part. Alone she went to the window and shuttered it- she knew from experience that Aaravos wouldn’t help her here- and then doused the fire.

When the room was dark the mirror that sat so innocuously in the corner began to glow. Lujanne squinted at it until the light coalesced into a single scene; a small dark room of stone with a toppled chair laying on its side next to a table covered in a pale sheet. In the background there were chains and long dried blood that gleamed in the light.

Once the mirror had sat in Thunder’s lair and she had been certain it was safe, but some silly magician a few months ago had stolen it. She was keeping tabs on the whole situation and sending messages back to Xadia, but the it was still unsettling. This was as close to a security risk as you got in the whole metaphysical prison business (not one she’d ever expected to go into, but here it was). On the whole the man didn’t seem to know what he was dealing with, but that could change at any moment.

The chair so closely positioned to the mirror unsettled Lujanne. The implications of looking closely were bad enough, but he seemed to be doing it in a dark room which she disliked.

She turned on Aaravos. “How long has your mirror shown this scene?”

He blinked at her, the light that covered him, surrounded him, swirling. “A while. It has... shifted a few times.”

“And are the humans aware of what forces they meddle with?”

Aaravos sprawled in a chair by the empty hearth. “No. He’s clueless. But why should you trust me on this front, Moon Guardian?”

Lujanne was not putting all her trust in him. Her only faith was in the fact that he had been truthful with her so far. She noted the location of the objects in the mirror so she could write a full report when she returned then turned back to him.

“We have some time before the full moon sets. Did you want to play cards?” She rather treasured the chance to play against someone other than herself, even if Aaravos was brutal at bluffing games. Chess had been taken off the table years ago after they’d flipped the board one too many times.

He rose to his feet, stretched languidly, and then moved towards her. “No. I need…” He laced his fingers with hers and squeezed. Lujanne took the hint.

It wasn’t an every month occurrence, these little trysts, but they did happen with some regularity. Both of them were touch hungry, both of them were bored, and both of them wanted the edge on the other. The sensations in this place between places were not quite the same as the real thing- Aaravos’ voice sounded like a low echo, and his touch was just a little cold against her skin. They were sufficient, however, to ease the need for interaction, for another living soul’s attention, that lurked in every heart.

His skin felt illusion-glassy and not quite real, but he trembled at her touch. That was enough. It was always enough.

The glowing mirror was a terrible thing to have an affair with an ancient, dangerous sorcerer in front of, so Lujanne began walking backwards out of the dark room. She knew the way to his always pristine bedroom by now (did he even need to sleep, half dead as he was?) and Aaravos followed her, looking wide-eyed and innocent as a lunar lamb.

“You’re bad for my heart, young man,” she warned, as he started kissing her neck hungrily. Aaravos flicked his hair over his shoulder and looked up at her through his pale lashes.

“I’m not young. Don’t lie for the sake of my pride, madame.”

“It’s not a lie,” she argued as he unbalanced them at the knees and sent them both toppling over onto the bed. “Oof! See? No matter what age you might be, you still have a young heart.” Whatever dark magics had preserved him in resin thus had also kept him mischievous as 50 year old mage. Lujanne, who had long been accused of not acting her age, could relate. She traced runes into the bare skin of his torso, ignoring the cool water texture of a manifested dream, and started pulling off the outermost, gossamer layer of his robes. It whispered like spider silk.

“That’s word play.” Aaravos mumbled from just below her ear.

“What have I said about sounding like my ex-husbands, dearie?”

If Lujanne kept joking she could make it through these encounters without having to reflect on what it was she was doing. It was in the longer, quieter spells, as they pulled off clothes or mouthed desperately at each other’s skin, that she was forced to consider her situation.

Aaravos was shirtless now, his bare torso showing the star map of some unknown world. Lujanne had managed to pull off her tunic and boots, leaving her in just her undershirt and breeches. It was never cold here, but neither was it warm. Intimacy was supposed to be sweaty and personal, even if you weren’t married to a Sunfire elf, but her assignations with Aaravos left her feeling chill as a mid-morning mist. He was untouchable, even when you were touching him.

“More,” he said softly, as she ran her hands up and down his sides and rubbed circles in the tense muscles of his neck. “More, Moon Mage, I beg of you.”

“Well,” Lujanne agreed, taking a moment to shimmy out of her pants, “If you beg.”

Truth be told, she liked it too. Even when the children had come, so full of life and questions, she had been careful not to grow too close to them. They were mostly human and they had their own destinies to fulfill. She liked children, they had such a fresh perspective on issues, but they simply didn’t make good conversation, much less a comforting presence in the face of solitude. They had such old fashioned moral hangups about lying!

She had Phoe-Phoe and she had herself, but at times that wasn’t enough.

Aaravos could hold his own in an argument, beat her at Gin Rummy 6 times out of 10, and touch her like she’d been touched in her youth. It was no doubt all part of his devious plot to manipulate her but that didn’t mean Lujanne couldn’t take advantage of it. At least sleeping with him kept him from plotting his escape in the thin time when the moon was full. If he was occupied- playing cards with her or exploring her crow’s feet - he wasn’t actively figuring out how to destroy the prison that contained him.

His teeth brushed over the sensitive skin on the inside of her thighs and she grabbed his horns on instinct. It was widely considered to be bad etiquette in bed, but what part of their relationship was in line with the manners manuals?

He rolled his eyes, indicating that he knew how out of line she was being and intended to make fun of her for it at a later date, then returned to his attentive ministrations. Carefully, purposefully, Lujanne relaxed and returned to stroking his head and ears.

“You know,” she mused, “Your hair has a different texture from a Moon Elf’s. It’s far sleeker but with thicker strands, like corn silk. Oh! Do _that_ again.”

“I’m not an ear of corn,” he griped, breath tickling her most intimate parts. Lujanne just laughed.

This Startouch monster was a scholar in all things. He knew how to unfold her and Lujanne returned the favor by touching every part of him in reach, slinging her legs over his shoulders and locking her ankles behind his neck, tugging at his ears, and talking, talking, talking.

“You do not know how long it’s been since I heard another voice,” Aaravos confessed when he surfaced for air. She was pretty sure she did, it had been exactly a month, but she let him have his little moments of petty drama.

“Long enough for you to get desperate,” Lujanne said good-naturedly, and dragged him up so he was face to face with her. He had such a pretty face. It was a shame it had done such awful things. “Not that I mind. You always do leave me _starstruck_ , Archmage.” To make sure he got the joke, she winked.

Briefly, Aaravos looked like he was about to throw a pillow. Then the sharp expression faded, leaving only a sort of desperate softness that reminded her of husband #2 in the early days of their marriage. Lujanne could eat that wobbly emotion up with a spoon.

Struck by a sudden mood, she grabbed his chin and tilted his head this way and that, watching the stars sparkle on his skin. Aaravos let himself be manipulated, all the while watching her back with his banther yellow eyes. When Lujanne pulled him in for a kiss she wondered what horrible magics he’d worked with this tongue that had been inside her, around her, and then reminded herself that it didn’t matter. All people were all things, like the phases of the moon. Life and death lived just inches apart, as did truth and lies. The illusion of normalcy, of sanity, was just that, an illusion. Aaravos might have broken some social taboos that even she balked at, but in the end he was just a clever elf. What was a monster except a story you told in your own mind?

She let herself sink deeper into the kiss, as Aaravos pressed himself close to her for the warmth that wasn’t there, and then had a thought.

“The human mage-”

He looked instantly guarded. “A strange thing to bring up in bed, Moon Guardian.”

“Stop teasing and listen. There was blood on the walls of his room. I thought it was just glittering in the mirror light, but it’s the full moon. That was moon elf blood, glowing for the moon’s face, I’d bet my best pair of socks on it.”

New revulsion crept up her spine. What had this human been up to? What terrible things had happened in the castles where the humans dwelt? She hadn’t interogated lovely Rayla and her boys too much, on the grounds that what happened in the past didn’t matter and was probably very boring anyways. Maybe she should have.

Lujanne locked eyes with him. “Did you know?”

“If there was an elf held prisoner by the humans,” Aaravos said, so evenly she could almost believe him,  “And I was aware, I would of course tell you. I am far gone, but not that far gone. Instead I am forced to suspect the poor creature is beyond saving.”

It did not ring true, but truth was as much of a lie as death was. Lujanne let it be.

“If I had known and had told you,” Aaravos asked, running his hands over her fine wrinkles, touching gently all the places where her skin now creased and fell prey to gravity, “Would you have let me go?”

“Of course,” Lujanne lied, with a laugh.

“You play with my fragile heart so,” Aaravos smiled sadly and nestled his head against her chest. She wondered if he could hear her heartbeat. Her illusion skills were strong but such fine details tended to be hit or miss.

Lost in thoughts of blood and torture as she stroked cornsilk hair away from Aaravos’s two-pronged horns, it took Lujanne a few seconds to answer. “Yes, well. After what you did, don’t you deserve it?” He was not a victim here, she took pains to remind herself. What he had done was so terrible that his name was still spoken with fear. There were no true monsters in her Moon Nexus, (just the three W’s, Worms, Whispers, and Wruins), and she was grudgingly prepared to extend that allowance to him, however he still had to be locked up for everyone’s safety.

The echoes of his actions had haunted Xadia for centuries. Even if you agreed that right and wrong were arbitrary moral buckets, letting someone so destructive go contradicted some sort of underlying ethical code of existence.

“You are as much a coward as the rest of them,” Aaravos hissed, pressing ever closer until they were skin to skin, flesh to flesh, bone to bone. She could feel the sharp edges of him and knew that whatever he looked like, he was not made of light.

Old she might be but Lujanne still kept up her strength. Regular arm wrestling (with herself), footraces (against herself), and the struggle that was trying to bathe Phoe-Phoe left her with lean muscles. Aaravos, an ancient mage in the slender body of a forever frozen youth, could not match her in physical power. She braced one knee against the bed and flipped the both of them. Now Aaravos was under her, spread out on the duvet, his bare limbs grasping for purchase. If she kept him flat on his back…

Of course, magic was a factor. Magic was always a factor. Even chained as he was in this place, he was clever. Given time his raw power would out. Before he could whisper some dragon words or trace a rune in the air, she leaned down to his ear.

“Stop it, you’re being childish. I don’t want to be your jailer, but we can go back to that if you want.” Lujanne’s main weapon was retreat, the ability to leave as she willed and return only sparingly. Her body was not real here and her true consciousness remained suspended in the caldera so far away. She could deny him her company, carry out only the barest requirements of her position, use the form of a grasshopper or a buzzing fly to access his study and leave without saying a word. That would leave him with the whole of the full moon to scheme, however, and the idea of that upset her. She’d rather interact with the live wire that was Aaravos than have him out of her sight, doing who knew what.

“You were always my jailer,” Aaravos spat. “We said pretty words and made friends, but the facts of our situation did not change, did they? I am still trapped here. Your people have still done a great wrong to me.”

He didn’t say, _And they’ll pay for that,_ because he wasn’t foolish, but the insinuation vibrated in the air between them.

“This is why I could never let you go,” Lujanne said, and let him sit up. “Now, about that human mage-”

Aaravos’s eyes filled with tears and he flung his arms around Lujanne’s neck. The abruptness of the action made her jump, almost made her flee back to the world of the living and her floating body. Only the feeling of longing, for touch, for this contact however laden with blatant manipulation, anchored her illusory form to Aaravos’s prison. Solitude was doing a number on her. She needed to invite Ellis and Ava up for tea and give Ava a thousand bellyrubs.

“Please,” he rumbled low in his chest. “We have such little time until moonset. I just need this.”

She held him.

“This is what your people have done to me,” he said in a voice strangely drained of spite. “This is what your great civilization of elves and dragons has made of the world.”

“Maybe so,” Lujanne agreed, rubbing circles in his back and wishing he wasn’t the most dangerous creature in existence. It had been a long time since Aaravos had pulled out all the stops and made her feel so guilty- at least a decade by her reckoning. The human dark mage must have shaken him.

Soft, cool lips nibbled at her ear. “Let me out of this place, wherever it is. I’ll stay confined to your Nexus. I’ll stay confined to your room. No one need know where I am. We can keep each other company in exile, Moon Mage. Don’t you want to know what it’s like to touch another person for real again?”

He’d never made the offer so brazenly before. In earlier years of Lujanne’s tenure it would have been far more tempting. Now, sated by conversation and the pointless antics of children, it just sounded sad.

“No,” Lujanne lied. “And that’s not my name, Aaravos. I really thought we’d be on a first name basis by now.”

Anger flared in his eyes. “Very well, _Lujanne_. If you will not admit the truth then I will admit it for you. You think yourself the gracious giver, who so indulges this poor touch-starved prisoner, but you are selfish. You want things, you want me. If you had your way you would see me every day and I would be meek and understanding. I would not demand anything of you that you did not want to give, not self-reflection, not empathy. You could play your little games, have your enjoyment, and then leave me to rot.”

It stung. But the key to good lying was to understand the truth yourself, deep down. You had to know the shape of the world to imitate it, you had to know what others saw to create the illusion they most wanted to see. It hurt to hear it said but the message wasn’t shocking. Aaravos didn’t lie and he was one of the cleverest elves to ever live.

Lujanne patted his cheek and watched how he twitched at her touch.

“That’s nice. Here’s a lie for you in return: I didn’t already know that. Now, do you want to play cards, keep cuddling, or would you have me leave?”

They played a cutthroat game of nude Bridge. Lujanne left without her clothes, because illusory clothes were not important in the long term. When she resurfaced from the glistening moonlight filled lake, frigid and gasping, she realized that he had never answered all her questions about the human mage.

Well, that probably wasn’t important, right?

 


End file.
